With a wisp of attention, Rule woke the twin powers in his gut. He focused again on the trace of scent carried by the breeze, not so much using the mantles as including them in his intention.
That scent sharpened in his nostrils immediately. Not a dog hit by a car, no. Nor a deer brought down by disease. Though the rot-stench overpowered the rest, he was almost sure the body he smelled had never walked four-footed.
Go. The breeze might die, or this new acuity fade. Go. Find out.
He launched himself into a run.
Wolves are largely indifferent to death as long as it doesn’t threaten them or theirs. The body he chased was certainly dead, so the wolf felt no urgency. But the man did. Rule ran for over a mile—not full-out, not over unfamiliar terrain with no immediate danger or prey. But he was fast in this form, faster than a born-wolf.
By the time he slowed, he knew he’d been right about the highway. He heard cars cruising perhaps half a mile ahead . . . not many. It wasn’t a major highway.
But what he sought lay within the woods. The rankness made his lip curl back from his teeth as he approached. Some other scent hid beneath the stench, but even with the mantles’ help he couldn’t sort it clearly, smothered as it was by putrefaction. Whatever it was, it brought up his hackles and started a growl in his throat.
Unlike some predators, wolves don’t sideline as scavengers; only one on the brink of starvation would consider eating meat this rotten. And Rule was too human, even now, to feel anything but a sad sort of horror at what lay in a shallow ditch between a pair of oaks.
Not all beasts are so picky, however. And he hadn’t been the first to find them.
TWO
IN a small, upstairs room in a large frame house, Lily Yu was sleeping. She didn’t know this.
She knew pain, grief, despair. A sky overhead that wasn’t proper sky, but a storm-colored dome, dimly glowing. In that surreal sky, legend battled nightmare—a dragon, dark and immense, grappled with a flying worm-thing whose gaping jaws could have swallowed a small car. The ground Lily knelt on was stone and dirt without a trace of green.
In front of her, unconscious and bleeding, lay a huge silver and black wolf.
So much blood. She couldn’t see how badly Rule was hurt, but it was bad. She knew it. The demon had ripped him open so thoroughly that even he couldn’t heal in time. Rule needed a doctor, a hospital, but there were no hospitals in hell.
She knew what she had to do. It was a hard knowing, as hard as the stones of this place—and as certain as spring in that other place, the Earth she remembered. The Earth she would never see again.
Another woman knelt across the wolf’s ripped and bloody body, a woman bound to Rule as she was bound because she, too, was Lily. Another Lily, the one who could take Rule home.
She looked up now and met her own eyes. “Leave now. You have to go right away and take him where he can heal. To a hospital. He’ll die here.”
The other-her swallowed. “The gate—”
“Sam told me how to fix it.” That’s what the dragon had told them to call him. Sam. Was that a bit of desert-dry dragon humor? She’d never know.
So much she’d never know. Never have the chance to learn.
Other-Lily’s eyes widened, and Lily saw her own dread knowledge reflected at her—a certainty the other tried to deny. “There has to be another way.”
“Funny.” Her lips quirked up, but her eyes burned. “That’s what I said.” She reached up and ripped the chain with its dangling charm from her neck, the emblem of her bond with Rule. “There isn’t, though. You’re the gate.”
Slowly the other-her held out a hand.
Lily dropped the toltoi charm into it. “Tell him . . .” Feelings smacked into her, a torrent too churned and powerful to sort. She looked down, blinking quickly, and stroked Rule’s head. She didn’t care that her voice shook. “Tell him how glad I was about him. How very glad.”
Other-Lily’s fingers closed around the necklace. She nodded, her expression stark.
Lily pushed to her feet. She tugged at the top of her sarong, and it came open. “Bind him with this. He’s bleeding badly.” She tossed it to her other self and took off running. Naked, barefoot, she ran full-out.
There were others nearby, too. Rule’s friends—a sorcerer, a gnome, a woman he’d once cared for. And there were demons, the demons they fought. Not so many of them yet, but more were coming. Hundreds, maybe thousands more. And there was one demon, one small and insignificant demon, who was something like a friend. A little orange demon named Gan, who wasn’t fighting as the others were, and so saw Lily race for the cliff. And understood.
“No!” Gan howled, and started after her. “No, Lily Yu! Lily Yu, I do like you! I do! Don’t—”
She reached the edge of the cliff. And leaped.
And as the air rushed past, heavy with the scent of ocean, whistling of terror and death, the dragon who called himself Sam whispered in her mind, Remember.
The opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth cut through the whistling wind, snatching Lily away from the impact just in time. Her eyes popped open on darkness, her heart pounding in soul-sickening fear. Automatically her hand stretched out for her phone on the bedside table. And bumped into a wall.
That simple, unexpected collision with reality jolted her back the rest of the way, though it took her a second to figure out why her bedside table wasn’t where it should be. No, why she wasn’t where she should be.
Lily had slept in too many beds in too many places lately. Home was San Diego, but she’d recently spent several months in Washington, D.C., getting special training at Quantico . . . among other things. But she and Rule were back in San Diego now, staying at his place. Only this wasn’t Rule’s apartment.
She was in Halo, North Carolina. This was Toby’s home, the house where Rule’s son lived with his grandmother, Louise Asteglio. It was 3:42 a.m., and Beethoven’s Fifth was Rule’s ring tone. She crawled across tumbled sheets to retrieve her phone from atop the chest of drawers. “What’s wrong?”
Rule’s voice was steady, but grim. “I found bodies. Three of them. Humans. They’re in a shallow grave, stacked on top of each other. The adult is on top.”
“Shit. Shit. The adult? Then . . . you’re sure? Stupid question,” she corrected herself, juggling the phone so she could yank off the oversize tee she’d slept in. “I hate it when it’s kids; that’s all.” She paused. Suitcase. Where was her . . . oh, yeah, in the closet. They’d arrived late enough that she hadn’t unpacked, but tucked it in the closet.
Lily yanked the closet door open and dragged out her suitcase. “They’re in the woods?”
“About half a mile east of Highway 159, north of town. I’ll wait for you at the highway.”
“I’ll find you.” That part would be easy. Just as a compass needle knows north, Lily knew where Rule was. That aspect of the mate bond came in handy.
Chosen, the lupi called her—and so did Rule, but not often. Mostly he called her nadia, which she’d learned came from a word meaning tie, girdle, or knot. But the lupi meant well when they called her Chosen, believing she’d been selected for Rule by their Lady—a being they insisted was neither mythical nor a goddess, though she seemed to play in that league.
Nine months ago Lily had met Rule’s eyes, the two of them chosen for each other, knotted together by the mate bond. Nothing had been the same since.
Good thing she’d fallen in love with him.
Lily wedged the phone between her chin and her shoulder while Rule gave her more details as she dug out jeans, socks, a tee. Clothes to tramp the woods in. She’d want a jacket to hide the shoulder holster.